Recent years have seen a protracted debate on the "fiscal theory of the price level". This doctrine is based on the intertemporal government budget constraint, which says that the real value of the government debt equals the discounted value of future government surpluses. It is observed that...

Recent years have seen a protracted debate on the "fiscal theory of the price level". This doctrine is based on the intertemporal government budget constraint, which says that the real value of the government debt equals the discounted value of future government surpluses. It is observed that...

In this paper I add to the evidence on possible nonlinearities in the conduct of ECB monetary policy. For this purpose a nonlinear Taylor rule (threshold regression) was estimated and compared to a linear benchmark model. The estimation was carried out with output gap data computed from...

This paper attempts to examine empirically the dynamic relationship between inflation, growth and interest rate under the presence of informal economy by employing panel VAR techniques over the period from 1960-Q1 to 2010-Q4. The size of the informal economy is quarterly estimated to uncover the...

This paper is an attempt to determine whether crime as an environmental factor has a significant impact on merchant preference for cash. I exploit a unique database from a representative sample of merchants and show that crime has a twofold impact on the merchant subjective preference for cash....

This paper applies univariate unit root tests to annual data of 26 countries to examine the stationary properties of hours worked over the period 1950-2010. To this end, both conventional unit root tests and recent unit root tests allowing for structural breaks and nonlinearities in data...

This paper investigates the design of optimal monetary policy in a currency union with asymmetric national labor markets. For this purpose a stylized theoretical two-country model is introduced where the occurrence of inflation differentials is a reflection of asymmetries in the labor market...

This paper re-examines the association of country-specific macroeconomic fundamentals and sovereign risk. Our analysis focuses on 26 countries, including both developed and emerging economies, during the period 2000-2009. For both groups, while inflation and twin deficits are associated with...

The Mediterranean is one of the areas the most exposed to climate change. Setting up measures of prevention and adaptation is a priority for the region, to reduce climate costs. The aim of this paper is to highlight the economic losses already incurred by the Mediterranean countries due to...

This note modifies Lagos – Wright (2005) by adding subsidies to sellers. We show that this modification can result in a Pareto efficient allocation at the Friedman rule when buyers do not have all the bargaining power. We find that the optimal rate of subsidy is increasing in buyers'...